The Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA) has unveiled a 10-point recipe for boosting Canada’s rate of commercialization. The industry association bases its recommendations on four assumptions it contends are “prerequisites for building consent on commercialization issues”.

The CATA briefing document — entitled Technology Commercialization and Wealth Creation — contends that an increase in Canada’s rate of commercialization is dependent upon understanding that:

* commercialization occurs exclusively in the private sector;

* Canada must develop a true culture of commerce;

* government activity should be designed to leverage academic and private sector activity; and,

* results can only be improved by better understanding that technology commercialization is a process measured as yield or time-to-market.

Of all the industry associations, CATA is unabashed in its evocation of free market forces and government’s role as a facilitator.

“It is difficult to determine exactly what the government should do to better commercialize technology (but) it is very clear what they should not be doing: they should do no harm”, states the CATA paper. “The imperative for the government to do (no) harm means not impeding, blocking or frustrating innovation or innovators by their actions and regulations.”

To that end, CATA’s recommendations stress the enhancement of private sector receptor capacity to work with early stage technologies, and building the voice of the customer into commercialization activities “so innovators focus on meeting a customer need, rather than government funding programs”.

The document also recommends increasing the rate of extraction of intellectual property from government labs, universities and hospitals, using government procurement to foster the adoption of new technologies, creating a Network of Centre of Excellence for commercialization,and aligning federal and provincial funding programs to increase the effectiveness of funds flowing to smaller firms.

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